Flight of the Scarlet Tanager

by Bevill, C. L.

  “MacGyver,” she muttered. But Teddy observed that Fitch possessed an ounce of morality. Once he relieved the truck of approximately five gallons of gas, using the garden hose as a siphoning tube and using the gas can in the back of the Explorer he left every dollar he had in his wallet under a rock on the hood of the victimized truck. She watched him do this with a certain sense of amusement and warned him, “You might be giving something away by leaving it like that.”

  Fitch shrugged and she shrugged in return. “I hate siphoning gas. It gives you gas burps.” He thumped his chest solidly. “I have got to get something to eat and drink.”

  After traveling through a number of small towns they made it to a larger section of highway by four AM, and met up with more traffic on the major roads. As it was Sunday, the number of vehicles on the roads was light, and they didn’t see a single police car. They passed through Salem, keeping to the outskirts of the state capitol and kept on the roads going east. After some time residences dwindled until they were once again in the midst of a forest. As the sun began to rise, Teddy could tell they were headed right up into the Cascade Mountains. Mount Hood was visible to the north, with Mount Jefferson directly in front of them, and the three sisters slightly to the south. They stood tall and majestic, their tips covered with pristine white snow, tinted a glowing pink with the morning light. “They’re concentrating on the coast,” she judged, putting her hands over her stomach as it started to grumble. “I hate to sound like a parrot, but you’ve got to get away from me.”

  Fitch turned to her, his expression forlorn. She abruptly realized he was mocking her. He said, “And here I thought we were getting to be such good friends. I was going to ask you if you wanted to be my date at the ball. They have a kicking frat ball around Halloween. Really...”

  Teddy went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “We need to dump this vehicle someplace where they won’t find it quickly. A town with a Wal-Mart. A supermarket that stays open all night long. At the back of a busy motel. Any of those would be ideal. An airport would be better, but any large airport is going to be covered by police officers who will have descriptions of you and me, and this vehicle. It’s possible that they won’t notice that it’s gone since you said the Halford’s are seasonal residents and you left the garage door shut, but they might see the tracks in the sand that lead down the side of the wall, and make a quantum leap. Then you’ve got to speak with your family. If they’re rich, and I have every reason to suspect they are, then they might be able to protect you from them. They don’t dare touch you. But you need to get a lawyer and quick. Tell them that I did everything, including stealing the car, the gas, everything. Don’t lie about the guy in the house. I shot him and I meant to kill him. If you’re cooperative and indicate that I coerced you into helping me, then they might leave you alone. But you have to be careful. Don’t trust them. Don’t trust the Feds, especially. You can’t tell who’s...”

  They rolled to a stop. The road had widened again and a little restaurant and tourist shop sat at the side of the road. All its lights were out and there were no cars apparent. Fitch put the Explorer into park and turned to her. “I don’t get it. I’m trying to get it. You have all these ideas about how to escape and evade. Like you’ve done this a hundred times before. You believe that there’s some sort of conspiracy with these Feds against you. What, a teenager? With what, Bill Clinton’s memoirs of the oval office? Nixon’s missing segment of the tapes? The real location of Jimmy Hoffa’s grave? The secret compound that causes Gulf War Syndrome?” He stopped and rested his elbow on the steering wheel, as he looked at her, his eyes golden in the energizing light of dawn. “I want to know the rest of it. I want to know because I’ve helped you. You stopped that guy from killing me. I deserve to know.”

  Teddy swallowed. “If I tell you they’ll kill you. Just like the last man I told. His name was Eddie Morris, and he was a pretty nice guy. They stuck him in a car, poured whiskey over him, and pushed it over a cliff. And no one cared that his wife said that Eddie didn’t drink. No one cared that he had a problem with driving at night, when the ‘accident’ happened.” She knit her fingers together and stared at the restaurant. The name on the rustic front was Banjo Bob’s Grill. She wiped something off her face and Fitch was afraid for a moment that she was crying. But then she added fiercely, “That’s why I can’t tell you.”

  Fitch turned to the front again without saying anything and put the Ford into drive once more. He drove around the back of the restaurant and parked the vehicle out of the sight of the road. There was a little residence in the back with an ancient, yellow VW Bug parked in front of it. “Good,” he said. “F-Bob is home.”

  “F-Bob,” she repeated. “What the hell is an F-Bob?”

  A minute later, a tall man with long gray hair and a beard opened up the screen door to the tiny house and stared at the pair of them. He was dressed only in cut-off jeans, and the hair on his chest was as gray as the hair on his head. He frowned at them until recognition dawned. He said, “Fitchie! Damn, boy. Get your butt in here. Ain’t seen you since you tried to blow a big hole in that wing of the university that was named after your grandmother.”

  Teddy raised her eyebrows.

  “That’s an F-Bob.” Fitch made a face and asked, “And did I tell you that I needed a lawyer this summer?”

  •

  Lieutenant General Bishop Lee sat in his office and took in the information that he had just received from his wife, Edana. She’d called because their security company had contacted them in regard to the family property in Oregon. There had been a problem at the house. The alarms had gone off, and police were in attendance. Although it had been after one AM, Bishop was still in his office dealing with national security issues, and suddenly there was a new matter to deal with.

  If he looked out his window he could see the bright lights of Fort Meade, Maryland, situated midway between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., but Bishop wasn’t interested in that. He had been in a turmoil of events since another spy had been detected within the ranks of the government the previous month. The National Security Agency coordinated, directed, and performed highly specialized activities in order to protect the United States’ information systems. Recently, it was another individual set deep within the government who had been selling information to the Israelis for the last seven years.

  However, what was coloring Bishop’s mind was that a few months before the most recent spy case, his son had accidentally blown up a large portion of a laboratory at his university in Oregon. Fitch, a bright, clever, smart-mouthed individual, with far too much imagination, and too much creative juice, had decided that some combustive materials combined together could make a more efficient fertilizer. Fitch’s intention had not been to blow up a lab, but merely provide a working prototype for his graduate chemistry class. He had been so busy calculating how he could do it, he neglected the part about whether he should.

  The media had giggled all the way to the presses.

  Fortunately, for everyone involved no one was killed, or even injured. At the last minute Fitch had realized the danger and managed to evacuate the building. Unfortunately, most of the lab he had been working in was damaged. At a cost of some two hundred and fifty-six thousand dollars to Fitch and the threat of imprisonment, Bishop had secured the assistance of an old friend who had been a JAG lawyer in the Army. Jack Macintosh had assisted in making a deal that cleared Fitch almost completely. He was to pay reparation to the University. He was to serve a limited amount of community service, which had already been completed. He would report to a probation officer for a period of six months, once a month, with specific paperwork involving employment, goals, and plans for the future, and once he completed all the terms of the bargain successfully his record would be adjudicated. Then the university’s board of directors would re-evaluate his admittance into the college of chemistry once more. After all, the boy had a sterling grade record, and he had plainly admitted his gross lack of judgment.

>   When Bishop had been alone that night after he’d found out what had happened, after he discovered that no one was hurt, and that the lab was only damaged, not utterly destroyed, he drank a snifter of one hundred year old brandy, and chuckled to himself.

  The other Bishop, the one who was the head of the NSA, the stern disciplinarian, had made his own bargain with Fitch. It involved all of the items that the court and Jack Macintosh had agreed upon and a few more that only a father could come up with. Fitch, although apologetic and sincere that he hadn’t intended to blow anything up, was not amused, but he complied. He would abstain from family events for the same six months. He would work for money, and live on that money, with no access to his trust fund. He could live in the beach house but there would be no hint of impropriety. He could drive the old Jeep, but he had to maintain it himself. He was to keep out of trouble. Bishop had not only emphasized it, he had repeated it to his eldest son no less than five times.

  Which made this whole business questionable, Bishop concluded. Fitch agreed, and when Fitch agreed to something it was his father’s experience that he carried out his part of the agreement.

  Now there was an implication that Fitch had assisted some young woman’s escape from the authorities. Two dead men in a hospital. One a reporter. There was another dead man in the beach house. In the house Bishop’s father had built in the sixties, and Bishop had enjoyed immensely with his children, even if his second wife hadn’t. Worse, the dead man was an agent for the FBI. And Edana was incensed. He could still hear her voice in his head, “That son of yours! Good God. He’s a smart-aleck. He’s a little ass. But to murder someone. In the beach house. It isn’t done!” Even Edana couldn’t believe that Fitch would be responsible for such a reprehensible act, although she was admittedly horrified that such condemnable activities could have taken place in the context of the Lee home on the scenic Oregon coastline.

  So Bishop had stayed at his office, far past the hours when his staff had left, ordering his assistant to leave as well. He was still there, waiting, when they returned in the morning. His son was clever. Perhaps he lacked commonsense at times, but he was far too intelligent. If something was happening, then his father wanted to be waiting by the phone that his son was certain to call. Not at their plush Maryland home where a servant would pick it up, or possibly a tap had already been connected, but at a government number to the National Security Agency where the FBI didn’t dare eavesdrop, where his father could be positive that no listening devices had been attached.

  Furthermore, Bishop expected that a phone call from his son wouldn’t be the only one he would eventually be receiving.

  Chapter Fourteen

  August 16th

  An excerpt from Big Daddy’s Book on Birding, written by Dan ‘Big Daddy’ Sully, Roget Press, 2005, pg. 61: And Big Daddy hears this question most of all when talking about ducks or geese: Why in the great blue blazes do them fellas fly in a formation shaped like a great, big, old ‘V?’ And the Big D has an answer. As a matter of fact, he has several. Answer numero uno: ‘Cause ‘W’s are too highfaluting complicated. Answer two: So that people can look up at them and ask, “Why do birds fly in a ‘V?’” Or my all-time favorite answer is of why them there quackers and honkers fly in a ‘V’ is so they can signal UFOs as to where all the secret government headquarters are located. (The arrow points the way, for those less humor-discerning readers of the Big D’s scholarly tomes of scientific value.) But really, geese and ducks probably have a whole lot better ideas about aerodynamic effects and flying in a ‘V’ is efficient for them. They get to draft off one another, just like we all do when we’re making that long-assed haul to visit the in-laws and we get behind those eighteen-wheelers. Hey, ifin we have to go, and God knows we gotta, then we might as well get that great gas mileage to have someting to talk about to the wife’s Weird Uncle Chainsmoke. But back to them birds. Specifically, the bird in front, which we would think of as the head honcho in charge, is actually one of the oldest, experienced individuals, who will rotate out when he gets pooped. But just imagine all these fellas with brains the size of peas getting together and flying better than any pilot for the military, simply because of instinct and genetics...

  Robert Uriah Wren intently stared at the young woman on his couch. He couldn’t put his finger on it exactly, what he was experiencing. It was a feeling of deja vu. He knew it. He knew this young woman. He didn’t think he’d seen her before in person. Somewhere else. An article in the newspaper. Something on the Internet. Something that was irritatingly scratching at the back of his brain, prompting him to remember, but he couldn’t quite grasp it. And it was bugging him.

  First, one of his favorite students had come driving up to the house in a SUV that plainly didn’t belong to him. After all, he knew the boy’s Jeep, and he knew the boy’s father. Consequently, because of the boy’s recent turn of events the Jeep was going to be staying with the boy for quite a period of time to come. However, traveling with Fitch was a cute little girl with a nose stud and an eyebrow ring. Bob was hoping to see if she had one in her navel, too, but was distracted by the big handgun with the silencer on the end that she had been carrying, and that she hadn’t hesitated in pointing at him. She hadn’t introduced herself and directed them into the house, with a last glance at the Ford Explorer that couldn’t be seen from the road.

  Fitch himself hadn’t seemed overly upset at being on the side of the gun that the bullets came out of, so Bob took a page out of his book and decided that while she might be threatening, she actually wasn’t dangerous.

  Bob himself had had an interesting night before, communing with nature by stoking up a doobie in the woods and drinking Budweiser until his back teeth were swimming, and he still hadn’t been able to get past his writing block. Considering that life had been innately unfair to him of late he’d prayed silently for God to send him a sign that he hadn’t been forgotten. All he’d received was thirteen mosquito bites and what was probably a case of poison oak across his ass. So when he’d heard the vehicle drive up, he’d grouchily gotten up, expecting to see his wife returning early from her trip north, and instead saw the pair that presently inhabited his house. Pondering his hangover headache and dry mouth with a speculative expression on his face he also reflected that God might have been listening after all. Here was some kind of sign; he just wasn’t sure on how to interpret it.

  Fitch came in from the kitchen with a plate full of scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausage. Although his mouth was full it certainly didn’t stop him from talking. “Rmdh lkd toiu baceuodn.”

  “Kid,” said Robert Wren, sometimes called F-Bob, sometimes called the Prof, and other times called a rotten-son-of-a-bitch by his ex-wives. “Didn’t your mother teach you that talking and eating are mutually exclusive activities?” He didn’t take his eyes off the young woman.

  Fitch swallowed and sighed with innate pleasure. “I have got to say that food never tasted better. Your eggs are...” he made a kissing noise, then repeated it. “Your bacon is très bon, commendable, laudable, ripping, bang-up, dandy, superior, high-test, and not to mention, tasty.” He paused to shovel another forkful of eggs into his mouth, his eyes watering with culinary delight. After he swallowed that, he added, “If you knew what kind of night I’ve had, then you would understand that I’m...hey.” He stopped in mid-sentence. He motioned at Teddy on the couch. Her head was lolling to one side, as if she had fallen asleep where she’d sat. A cup of coffee was held loosely in one hand, propped against her thigh. The other hand loosely held the Glock. “I guess she finally conked out.”

  F-Bob nodded slowly. “That will happen when you give someone three doses of Valium.”

  The younger man looked at F-Bob. Then he looked at Teddy. She was breathing, her chest moving in and out shallowly. Her face was on the edge of being strikingly beautiful when she was relaxed and tension wasn’t straining her. Fitch said, “I don’t know if you should have done that, Prof.”

  F-Bob sighed melodramatic
ally. “Hey man, don’t call me that. You know good and well they put me out to pasture last year. Too many ideas about how to run the physics department. Too many thoughts on the ‘suits.’ Too many thoughts about reorganizing the structure so that students, and free-minded professors, of course, would benefit.” His voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper, and shook his shaggy head sadly. “They don’t like hippies who have tenure. Mandatory retirement, my lily-white, pink-tinted, shiny, round ass.”

  “Bob,” said Fitch, after watching Teddy. She seemed to be breathing all right. The half-sewn up cut on her face was angry and red, but the bleeding had long since stopped, and the white drawn look on her face had loosened with the onslaught of drugged sleep. “We’ve got a real problem here.”

  Bob sat back in the La-Z-Boy recliner and regarded Teddy. He gestured at her with his hand and said, “I like her. She points a gun at me, in my own house, and demands food, and then she adds ‘please.’ What does that say about her?” He leaned forward again so that he could examine her face more closely. “I suppose she’d get upset if we washed that make-up off her face. I’d really like to get a better look at her features.”

  “Most women wouldn’t take that kindly,” muttered Fitch, stuffing sausage in his mouth. His glance went to Teddy as well. He wouldn’t mind seeing the makeup off her as well. He suspected she looked even cuter without it. “Did you know I was coming up here, man, because your refrigerator is stocked? I mean with the good stuff. Filet mignons, center-cut pork chops, and chicken breast that you’ve been marinating in garlic, rosemary, and Coors.”